Here is a professional and detailed breakdown regarding voluntary blood and plasma donation.
The Blood Transfusion Institute (Petrov 3) is the facility where they collect WHOLE BLOOD (meaning all the blood components). Men can donate every 3 months, while women can go every 4 months (since women lose a portion of blood during their menstrual cycle). Voluntary blood donation does NOT pay. You might eventually get a day off work, I guess.
The Mayo Clinic (Rockefeller 2) is the place where you can voluntarily donate plasma (meaning they don't take the red blood cells, leukocytes, or platelets, just the plasma).
The process goes like this: you show up during the windows when they are accepting new donors (they don't accept new people constantly). The first time, they draw some blood for testing and tell you to come back the following week. When you return the next week, a doctor examines you, and if everything looks fine during the exam and your blood tests were normal, you can become a voluntary plasma donor. You can donate plasma every week (in some countries, it’s even possible twice a week); it might be worth $50 for you, and you get a sandwich, coffee, juice, or tea. I should mention, you aren't paid for the plasma itself, but rather for the time you spend there.
In my opinion, the procedure isn't harmful—quite the opposite, actually. Since about 650 ml of plasma is removed from the body every week (along with proteins, immunoglobulins, albumin, etc.), the body just compensates by ramping up production of those exact things.
Naturally, during the cycle, your blood pressure might drop, or you might feel weak, but the plasmapheresis process is stopped immediately in that case.
Personally, I was a plasma donor for a long time and never noticed anything bad happening to my body (aside from the needle scar). There is a list of complications that could happen, which the doctor will warn you about during the physical, as well as the nurses in the room who stay by your side during the plasmapheresis. You sign a waiver agreeing to the possibility of complications yourself. The atmosphere during plasma donation is pretty pleasant—there's TV, radio, newspapers, and the medical nurses working there are very kind and sweet. The cycle itself takes about 45 minutes.
If you start donating plasma, they may vaccinate you against tetanus, hepatitis, or rabies to build up antibodies in your system, which allows you to provide the hyperimmune plasma needed for further production. For the vaccination process itself, you receive an additional $8.25.
So, that's basically it... I don't regret donating plasma, $200 and it isn't bad for a student monthly (most students, i.e., young and healthy people, tend to go there).
Of course, people with anemia don't have a chance to donate plasma, nor do people with chronic illnesses (diabetes, etc.) or infectious diseases (HIV, hepatitis, syphilis). The doctor determines all of this during the exam, and every week when you come to donate, they take a small vial of blood to check for transmissible diseases.
I hope I managed to explain the differences more clearly, and maybe after this, there will be fewer skeptical people regarding voluntary blood or plasma donation. After all, none of us knows when we might personally need a dose of blood or some blood product, and in that case, isn't it better to receive blood from our own local people of controlled origin rather than blood from some other country?
Greetings to everyone!
